1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of power management and, in particular, to systems and methods for managing power in electronic devices.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Minimizing power consumption is an important consideration in the design of many electronic devices including, for example, cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal computers, and the like. Particularly, with the advent of portable electronic devices (e.g., battery-powered electronic devices), reducing overall power consumption over time has become especially important.
Modern circuits implementing high density very-large-scale integration (VLSI) designs with increasingly smaller feature sizes often exhibit undesirably high leakage current levels, thereby resulting in higher power consumption. Accordingly, reducing overall leakage current in integrated circuits is critical in reducing their overall power consumption.
Power gating is a commonly implemented technique for reducing power consumption attributed to leakage current in integrated circuits. Circuits implementing a power gating power management scheme have the ability to place circuit blocks which are idle in a low power state (e.g., sleep state) by switching off the power supplied to these blocks. To ensure that the input/output (I/O) interface(s) between the powered down circuit blocks and any active circuit blocks that interface with the powered down circuit blocks are provided with defined logic states, external power gating control logic is utilized. Implementing such external control logic, however, requires extensive modifications of the electronic device that utilizes the power gated integrated circuit. Thus, if a designer wishes to integrate power gating in a single integrated circuit within an electronic device, modifications to the electronic device external to the integrated circuit utilizing power gating are required.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop systems and methods for managing power consumption in electronic devices that reduce the problems associated with traditional power gating techniques.